I like Krit, I like Michael Watts, and I love Chopped & Screwed music. I think K.R.I.T. Wuz Here is still fantastic (albeit overrated), and I think Watts is one of the most talented chopped and screwed DJ’s alive. However, this just doesn’t feel right. The tempo’s still too fast, Krit hardly sounds any different, and the mood just isn’t reminiscent of what we’ve come to expect from C&S music. This just isn’t very good, at all. I may download the C&S’d version of K.R.I.T. Wuz Here when it drops, because maybe some of the more somber songs will fare better with the lean treatment. This isn’t one of them, though.
So, the second quarter is over. Time to do some catch-up; I posted my favorite Q1 releases(about a month or two late, mind you) here - http://yayodancing.tumblr.com/post/562047979/q1-is-over - when I first got started with this tumblr. Now, I’m going to simply post pictures of my favorite Q2 releases because I’m bored and I like to have this for collective purposes. Also, it’ll help when I round up my album of the year list in five odd months.
I’ve already given my thoughts on K.R.I.T.’s debut album, K.R.I.T. Wuz Here, early on in my blog. I’m still bumping it now, and believe it’s easily one of the best debut projects from an artist in a long while. What made me review this particular track was Pitchfork’s reviewing of it; although I’m not the harshest Pitchfork critic, I am someone who isn’t completely comfortable when they decide to review hip-hop. Their love of crack-rappers and country rappers, to be ironic, often frustrates me. You wouldn’t believe how irritating it is to see someone who listens to nothing but Pitchforkian band listen to Gucci Mane just because Pitchfork started covering him. As someone who has his heart in this rap-shit, the hipster-demograhic that make up Pitchfork are the last people I want covering an emerging artist like Big K.R.I.T., as it’s going to make at least half of his fanbase at this early in his career a bunch of skinny-jean wearing Tom Waits enthusiasts (Tom Waits ftw, btw)
I know noz touched on this in his review of K.R.I.T.’s album, but I’d like to bring it up here; country rap is slowly becoming this generation’s backpack rap. Ever since UGK finally made it to prominence with their double-disc, Underground Kingz, in 2007, critics have slowly discovered this emerging rap scene throughout the South that is, for the most part, stylistically different from the boom-bap street rap they covered in the early Aughts, and electro-hop they covered in the later half. Now critics are wearing “R.I.P. Pimp C” shirts every December 4th, and actually giving a kid named Yelawolf a chance.
K.R.I.T.’s Country Shit isn’t the beginning of this revolution, but it stands out a lot considering it’s nothing more than a free album that was released on the internet with no promotion. I didn’t see them reviewing Smoke DZA’s album, nor have they reviewed anything by similar artist, Curren$y, two cats they probably would have fawned over in the past due to being less organic. Already hipsters have already started checking out K.R.I.T. based on his Pitchfork co-sign alone, and although that’s great for him, I can see this having a negative side effect in his long-term future.
